#I'll even turn anon messages back on in case anyone wants to ask questions without feeling silly

[comradecowplant]

Goal for 2024/j113 is to convince every one of my followers who like & reblog my gay jokes and art images but never interact with the communist posts to consider the possibility that the DPRK isn't an evil comic book villian country, and if we can achive that & open our minds enough, maybe even convince you that stalwart resistance to global imperial hegemony that has survived for decades despite the world's superpowers doing everything to literally starve them out of existence is actually pretty damn cool 🇰🇵

[oumakokichi]

Do you have any thoughts on the endless comments about how Oumasai is just like Komahina and that Kodaka just put in Ouma's crush on Saihara to "pander" to Komahina shippers? Because like you said, those characters are different and the similarities are only superficial. And I know it's not perfect, but I'll take whatever hints that a character is gay that I can get (and I like that Saihara is bi too) so having it dismissed as just "yaoi pandering" by so many is rubbing me the wrong way.

I think quite a lot of thepeople making these kinds of comments are either people who haven’t actuallyplayed the game for themselves yet and have only heard bits and pieces ofmisinformation or fake spoilers. That, or they’re likely just intentionallytrying to start up drama.

I know for sure the rude anon whosent me a couple of messages was going around harassing other people in thefandom for shipping saiouma, and that they called it “yaoi pandering” onseveral occasions. In my experience, accusations like those, as well as some ofthe other comments they made, are just for the sake of starting up a fuss.

It’s pretty impossible toreason with people who already have their minds set on harassing people nomatter how incomprehensible or twisted their logic gets, moreso if they refuse toput a name to their opinions. Anonymity can make people feel safe enough to saypretty rude things that they wouldn’t say otherwise, rather unfortunately.

The “yaoi pandering” accusationis something that I’ve seen a lot of in my time, not only in the DR fandom butin many others as well. It’s usually one of the first that people rely onwhenever there’s confirmation of a character being gay. Sadly, even oneconfirmed gay character among an entire cast of straight characters is too muchfor people to handle sometimes, and the word “pandering” gets thrown around alot when the word they’re really looking for is “representation.”

No matter how little fanservicethere is and no matter how plot-relevant and important a gay character’sromantic feelings are to driving the plot, there are always people who aregoing to deny it or make excuses that it’s “just pandering.” People don’t talkabout it much, but there were similar accusations back when dr3 was firstairing, about how all the foreshadowing that Juzo was gay was “justbaiting/pandering.” Many, many people denied that it was actually the case atthe time, stating that they were “just leaving it ambiguous on purpose topander” to people who shipped Juzo and Munakata, but that it was “clear thatJuzo really had feelings for Chisa.”

Of course, we know how thatturned out. Juzo’s orientation and romantic feelings wound up being anextremely plot-relevant matter, and the foreshadowing was always there. Butuntil the direct confirmation happened, it got entirely dismissed as “pandering”by quite a few people.

I think that’s pretty much thesame thing that’s going on now. Much like Juzo’s feelings for Munakata wereconfirmed one-sidedly, Ouma is also directly confirmed to have feelings forSaihara. I’ve talked at length in plenty of asks about how the language he usesisn’t platonic or ambiguous in that scene; people who try to pass it off assuch fail to realize, I think, that he uses the exact same phrase for fallingin love with Saihara that Maki uses for Momota later on.

Much like Juzo’s feelings forMunakata, Ouma’s feelings for Saihara are also a plot-relevant matter. If itwere truly “pandering,” then there would be only ship-bait and no substance.But Ouma’s interest in Saihara is something alluded to as early as Chapter 2,when Saihara begins to take on a clearly different role from what wasoriginally intended for him in the killing game, and it culminates in Chapter4, with Ouma becoming so fixated on him that, paranoid as he is, he actuallydoes want to team up with him, because he clearly thinks Saihara is one of thepeople he can trust the most.

Even though he can’t quitetrust him fully, even though he can’t quite figure him out according to hiswhiteboard, he still takes an interest in him, and finds him fascinating. HisFTEs are proof of the fact that he’s plenty encouraging when he wants to be;for all his teasing and taunting and cryptic remarks, he pushes Saihara tobecome stronger and to question the world around him. Ouma is just asinfluential in pushing Saihara to trust in his talent and decisions as Kaedeand Momota are, in my opinion—the problem is that by Chapter 4, Ouma pushes toohard.

Ouma’s desire to be “solved”and “understood” is at direct odds with his paranoia and refusal to trust inanyone. He’s a phantom thief at heart, something hilariously lampshaded by hislove hotel scene (which also points out that the dynamic there between himselfand Saihara is really not any different at all from their normal dynamic), andthat means that deep down, he does want someone to chase after him and “figurehim out,” because he thinks he’s this huge enigmatic mystery that only someonereally interesting could ever hope to solve.

But because of the killing gameitself, because trusting in people only gets you killed and exposes your ownweakness, he refuses to trust in the rest of the group, and he refuses to everopen up to Saihara completely. Rather than telling him what’s on his minddirectly or coming clean about his plans to end the killing game, he refuses toever fully put his trust in Saihara even when he’s so clearly interested inhim. This inability to reach out to others or let himself be reached out to isalso directly alluded to in his final FTE with Saihara, where Saihara expressesan interest in wanting to get to know him more, but Ouma declares that they’redone spending time together from that point on.

My point is, Ouma lets hisemotions interfere with his plans for the first time in Chapter 4. Logically,he refuses to trust, but emotionally, he still wants to form an alliance andteam up with Saihara. The result is the grand disaster and boiling point thatis the Chapter 4 trial, where he and Momota spend hours nearly tugging Saiharain half by forcing him to “pick a side.” Ouma wants him to cut his ties withMomota and everyone else, because he can’t cooperate with him as long asSaihara is cooperating with the others. And Saihara thankfully puts his footdown at the end of the trial and calls Ouma out on his selfish, hypocriticalbullshit.

Ouma was someone who wasclearly capable of predicting outcomes and other people’s behavior to anincredible amount—otherwise he would never have been able to write a script thesize of a telephone book in Chapter 5 that had “multi-branching routes” andaccurately predicted nearly every single one of his classmates’ lines. Thislevel of prediction and analysis closely mimics talents found in characterslike Junko and Kamukura, both of whom are closely associated with the idea of “boredom.”

And we know that Ouma himselfsimilarly detests boredom. His desire to treat things as a “game,” to playeverything on “hard mode,” stems from an urge to make things more exciting,even if he has to rely on childish or silly (or bratty) means to do so.Regardless of whether people like him as a character or not, the fact that he’svery, very smart has to beacknowledged, objectively. And like other smart characters before him, hesought anything at all that would distract him or alleviate his boredom.

His interest in Saihara wasclearly just that: it was unexpected. He didn’t foresee taking an interest inhim. In fact, I think he was bored by him in Chapter 1. It’s only when Saiharabegins straying away from his pre-written role in the killing game anddemonstrating a surprising amount of willpower and resolve, despite the factthat he is still anxious and scaredof everything, that Ouma seems to have reevaluated his opinion of him.

More than anything, I don’tthink he ever expected his own feelings for Saihara to escalate to the levelthat they did. Ouma was someone who wanted to believe he was capable of makingany sacrifices necessary, no matter how cold or how harsh. Despite his bestefforts to keep himself removed from the group and trust no one, he clearlystill got attached to Saihara and was surprised to realize as much in Chapter4. The fact that he goes so completely blank and immediately stops his ramblingvillain routine in the Chapter 4 post-trial is clear proof of that.

He thought he could get bywithout ever getting close to anyone in the killing game, and he was surprisedto realize that he actually did care what Saihara thought of him. What’s more,he had clearly been expecting Saihara to “figure him out” and realize what hewas up to, despite making it completely impossible to do so by acting somysteriously and antagonistically, and was irritated and put off upon realizingthis after Saihara called him out on his shitty behavior.

His feelings for Saihara areclearly directly tied to his actionsin the plot. Whether Saihara ever could reciprocate under other circumstancesis a matter of pure speculation, but Ouma’s feelings at least are canonicallystated in Chapter 4, and the scene is extremely plot-relevant and unskippable. Tocall that “yaoi pandering” simply… misses the point, I think. Pandering andbaiting certainly do occur in media, and it’s important to keep an eye out forthose things and to think critically about the media we consume. But dismissingevery new canon confirmation of a character being gay as “pandering” is counterproductive,in my opinion.

Gay representation is very hardto come by as it is. As someone who is gay myself and who has been disappointedand let down many times by ships which mostly relied on baiting, rather thansubstance, I have since learned to keep an eye out for these things and torecognize them as they occur. In my opinion, Ouma having canonically confirmedfeelings for Saihara is hardly “pandering,” any more than Juzo’s feelings forMunakata were.

His feelings are directly linkedwith why he acts the way he does, and his mistakes and flaws get called out andaddressed within the narrative rather than glossed over or idealized for “shippy”reasons. As you mentioned, anon, Saihara and Ouma are both drasticallydifferent characters from Hinata and Komaeda, so saying that Ouma’s crush wasthrown in simply to pander back to komahina shippers is like saying Hinata andNanami’s interactions were only added to sdr2 to pander to naegiri shippers. It’sa false equivocation, a comparison of two things that don’t actually haveanything to do with one another but that sounds convincing when brought up inan argument.

The best advice I can give ismostly what I said at the beginning of this ask: just ignore those people if theycome seeking an argument. That kind of argumentative language is usuallysomething people only use if they’re clearly looking to inspire a reaction ormake people angry, so the best thing is to just not pay them any attention. It’sfrustrating when people who are rude are extremely loud and vocal about theiropinions, of course, but everyone is entitled to their opinion, and there’s nopoint in arguing with them if their minds are already made up.

I’m very much of the sameopinion as you: I like representation where I can get it, and I was hardlyexpecting another canon gay character so soon after Juzo, so I was extremelysurprised and pleased when Ouma’s feelings were confirmed. The inclusion oflove hotel scenes with the guys for Saihara was something else that I’m happyabout, even if there are a number of problems with the love hotel scenes ingeneral—often, the option isn’t even presented to have a protagonist interactoptionally in a romantic context with people of the same gender, if the Personafranchise is any example.

Having even a few more LGBTcharacters confirmed by the narrative makes me happy. Those accusations of “pandering”have always been a thing in fandom and will probably continue to be a thing,but I try not to pay it much mind. Thank you for giving me a chance to talkabout my feelings on the matter, anon! I’m glad I had a chance to go morein-depth with this particular topic.